For a committed sensualist and prototypical hippie, a man who wore floppy hats, granny glasses, love beads and a droopy mustache that made him look like General Custer at an acid test, Richard Brautigan (1935-1984) had a potent work ethic.

He wrote nearly every morning, regardless of keening hangovers. He spent the rest of the day, William Hjortsberg notes in “Jubilee Hitchhiker,” his sprawling and definitive new biography of this most offbeat of American writers, “in pursuit of happiness.”...

Facebook Inc and banks including Morgan Stanley were sued by the social networking leader's shareholders, who claimed the defendants hid Facebook's weakened growth forecasts ahead of its $16 billion initial public offering.

The defendants, who also include Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, were accused of concealing from investors during the IPO marketing process "a severe and pronounced reduction" in revenue growth forecasts...

Had someone told me that I'd attend an event featuring a liberal cartoonist and a retired brigadier general who was the recent head psychiatrist in the Army, I'd have said, "No way!" But that's what happened the other night as I attended a get-together with Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury fame and Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton as they talked about a project they're working on called Homeward Bound Adirondacks, which is designed for veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan...

Rules and conventions about when to use and not to use commas are legion. But certain errors keep popping up. Here are a few of them...

Tax hikes and spending cuts set to take effect in January would suck $607 billion out of the economy next year, plunging the nation at least briefly back into recession, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.

Unless lawmakers act, the economy is likely to contract in the first half of 2013 at an annualized rate of 1.3 percent, the CBO said, before returning to 2.3 percent growth later in the year...

Before 9 a.m., a group of lobbyists began showing up at the White House security gates with the chief executives of their companies, all of whom serve on President Obama’s jobs council, to be checked in for a roundtable with the president.

At 1 p.m., a dozen representatives from the meat industry arrived for a briefing in the New Executive Office Building. At 3 p.m., a handful of lobbyists were lining up for a ceremony honoring the 2011 World Series champions, the St. Louis Cardinals...

“Good morning! Who are you going to vote for?”

That is the new standard Egyptian salutation, said Shafiq Abdel Khaleq, 50, an engineer playing chess at a streetside cafe in the working-class Cairo neighborhood of Sayeda Zeinab.

“There isn’t anyone left who doesn’t talk about politics,” he added, moving a piece.

“But no one knows anything!” replied his opponent, Hussein Zayed, a 53-year-old importer, who then called checkmate...

Feeling the warm sun on his face, blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng relaxed in an outdoor playground with his family Sunday, basking in perfect spring weather—and not having to worry about being beaten or harassed for the first time in years...

At least two things are happening this week. One is close to home: on Tuesday, The New Yorker relaunched its books blog, which is now titled Page-Turner. The second is also an online event, happening now: Facebook’s I.P.O. In light of these events, we’d like to propose a question that combines technology, literature, and social networking, and ask you to write a Facebook-style status update for any fictional character in literary history...

To those unfamiliar with a battlefield’s bleak routine, Col. Michael D. Wirt’s database could be read like a catalog of horrors. In it, more than 500 American soldiers are subjected to characteristic forms of violence of the Afghan war. Faces are smacked with shrapnel, legs are blasted away near knees, bullets pass through young men’s abdomens. Vehicles roll over, crushing bones. Eardrums rupture. Digits are severed. Dozens of soldiers die. Hundreds more begin journeys home, sometimes to treatment that will last the rest of their lives.

Each was listed in a small but meticulous computer entry by Colonel Wirt, a doctor intent on documenting how soldiers were wounded or sickened, how they were treated and how they fared...